Friday, August 12, 2011

Facebook shows even more fear (of Google+, etc.)

Facebook made some noteworthy changes to its Platform policies on the 27th of July 2011, adding a couple of new terms developers need to take into account when building apps for the Facebook Platform. Facebook appears not to have communicated the revisions on its developer outreach blog or forum as far as I can tell, and astonishingly, nobody seems to have noticed the policy updates whatsoever (save for one eagle-eyed blogger).
Here are two items that were added to the Platform Policy:
“I.10. Applications may reward users with virtual currency or virtual goods in exchange for user actions that do not involve third parties, but rewards for user actions that involve third parties must be powered by Facebook Credits by integrating Facebook Credits offers.

For example, you may not reward users with virtual currency or virtual goods in exchange for any action in which personally identifiable information is shared with a third party, you may not reward users with virtual currency or virtual goods in exchange for third party downloads, such as toolbars or ringtones, and you may not reward users with virtual currency for engaging in passive actions offered by third parties, such as watching a video, playing a mini-game, or taking an anonymous poll.”
This is another step to force Facebook Credits upon application developers, who can now no longer provide users with virtual currency in exchange for playing a game, participating in a poll or watching a video provided by a third party. Some will inevitably cry foul, but I think it’s a reasonable new term.
But more interesting is this one:
“I.11. Apps on Facebook may not integrate, link to, promote, distribute, or redirect to any app on any other competing social platform.”
Read that again. Facebook is saying that any app that runs on its platform is prohibited from integrating, mentioning or in any way linking to any app on any competing social platform.
For the record, this is in line with Facebook’s advertising guidelines, which state that ads that promote competing products or services will be rejected. In my opinion, there’s a difference though.
Needless to say, this appears to be a very broad measure that could potentially affect legions of applications that redirect or in any other way link to sites such as Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, hi5, Flickr, and a wide range of other social networking services.

It may not be Facebook’s intention of going after these, but the wording of the new terms of the Platform Policy should be of some concern to a number of application developers. For what it’s worth, Facebook says it hasn’t banned any apps based on the new terms to date.
There is, however, at least a whiff of anti-competitiveness surrounding the new terms.
A Facebook spokesperson posits:
“As many companies do, we have policies that prohibit apps from directing users to apps on competing social platforms. We recently updated these policies to ensure they’re clear for developers building on our platform.”
For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with Facebook that the policies are clear or standard, nor do I think developers are actually aware of the policy updates that were made. I also have trouble understanding why Facebook opted not to communicate the changes in policy via its developer blog or forum, given the vastness of its third-party developer ecosystem and the sensitivities that come with such policy changes. They should have learned this by now.

More @ tcrn.ch/oGng0h

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